Jenkins, New Mexico

Jenkins, located approximately 20 miles northwest of Tatum and 5 miles west of Crossroads, was established around 1910 and named after the Rev. William Jenkins, who homesteaded the area and applied for a post office, which was authorized  and opened on June 21st, 1910, with the Reverend's son, as Postmaster.

Jenkins had a store and small school that supported the ranching communities in the area.

The post office was closed on January 21st, 1926.

In "Jim Harris's"  book, "Frontier Land, Pioneer Spirits", Jim writes about the Jenkins cemetery.

Jenkins Cemetery: A Moving Land

AT first glance, it's just two acres of flat land, fenced with barbed wire and hard to distinguish on the lonesome prairies of northern Lea County. It's overgrown with buffalo grass, a few clumps of green scattered within its sandy boundaries. The grasses are cut short by the cattle and horses that graze in every direction.

As far as the eye can see, the land looks like a calendar of the Llano Estacado, that solitary forlorn land so many people feared and avoided until they learned of the wealth of water lying just below the surface.

But at second glance the Jenkins cemetery becomes one of those places that evoke potent responses in its visitors. It has the power certain places have to make one feel as if he or she, has been there before or knows someone who rests just below.

Slithering through the strands of rusty barbed-wire last week, I couldn't help but think of the lines from the old cowboy ballad: "Bury me not on the lone prairie, where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free."

Guided by, "Bill Wolfe" who lives about four miles from the cemetery and who has visited the it many times in his life. When he was a kid, Bill and his friends played in the open fields around Crossroads, he and his friends walked past the cemetery on many occasions.

Although he had not been to the Jenkins cemetery for several years, the names on the markers were still familiar to Bill.

Henry and Homer Veazey, father and son who were buried in 1920 and 1921

In, 1917 several men, women and children were put to rest in the cemetery grounds. U.A. Burkham; Luther Allen; C.Y. Stewart; and Ruth Cook a child that lived only two months, and most likely died from the outbreak of flu that killed several hundred thousand Americans in 1917 and 1918.

A house built by U.A. Burkham still stands a few miles east. Walter Burkham, born 1885, was buried in 1919. Lula Burkham was probably the last person buried in the Jenkins cemetery, she died in 1954 at the age of 88.

Luther Allen was one of Lea County's Civil War veterans. He served in a Michigan regiment of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Several members of the Hebison and Piles families, lie in the cemetery.

Bill Wolfe tells the story of one woman buried there who committed suicide by drinking poison. Attesting to the loneliness and harshness of life on the American Plains.

Jim writes," Standing on the sacred grounds, now part of the Caswell Cattle Company land, I tried to recall some of the names of the little communities that were born and that died in southeastern New Mexico in the early 1900s. Often the town was just a store and post office". That was the case of Jenkins, the town site just a half-mile northwest of the cemetery

Excerpts printed with permission from "Jim Harris"